Reading Embodied Citizenship: Disability, Narrative, and the Body Politic

4 Conceiving the Freakish Body: Reimagining Reproduction in Geek Love and My Year of Meats

4 / Conceiving the Freakish Body: Reimagining Reproduction in Geek Love and My Year of Meats In the American political arena, the figure of the child carries special ideological weight. Candidates and special interest groups sell their positions as a promise to America’s children of a better future. As denoted by pop songs and campaign ads, children are synonymous with the future, and as such, figures of reproduction and childhood take on heightened significance in the discourse of citizenship. In describing a similar political dependence on the alliance between the figure of the child and the appeal to the future, Lee Edelman argues, “We are no more able to conceive of a politics without the fantasy of the future than we are able to conceive of a future without the figure of the child” (11). But while political rhetoric makes heavy symbolic demands on the figure of the pregnant woman or the smiling grade-schooler, these figures are successful because they appeal to seemingly uncomplicated, unanimous values. Who doesn’t want to make a better world for our children? Who doesn’t believe that children should be protected and celebrated?1 In employing the seemingly apolitical figure of the child, voices from the right and the left share an appeal to the notion of a universal citizen. Perhaps it is because the image of childhood has been so politically efficacious that the practicalities of conceiving and raising actual children have become so politically charged. The flip side of “children are our future” is an often violent and intensely divisive set of debates over abortion, reproductive technologies, fertility treatment, gay marriage, and adoption rights. Each of these national debates takes place in and over the body in 132 / conceiving the freakish body yet another valence of embodied citizenship. In her discussion of these issues as the ground of a newly “intimate public sphere,” Lauren Berlant argues, “A nation made for adult citizens has been replaced by one imagined for fetuses and children” (1). In her account of how this move takes place, Berlant emphasizes vulnerability as the figural connection between the traumatized adult citizen and the imagined national child. She elaborates on the position of the “citizen-victim” with a series of terms: “pathological, poignant, heroic, and grotesque” (1). As much as any of these terms suggests the figure of the vulnerable child, they also evoke the image of disability as conceived in the popular imagination. Perhaps best captured in a literary figure like Tiny Tim, disabled people are often frozen in an infantilized role. The poster children and “Jerry’s Kids” telethon subjects that dominate visions of disability in the popular imagination can arrest disability in a time of endless childhood, where the need for accommodations seems to equal childlike dependencies. While typically less visible in the national conversation, the history of disability is similarly charged with struggles and debates over children and reproduction. In the sphere of reproductive rights, the documented history of forced sterilization and eugenics continues to impact the lives of disabled people. For women with disabilities like Down syndrome, the right to bear children has been fought in legal circles, and women who are infertile or have other reproductive problems face struggles with the medical and insurance industries. The question of who should or can have children becomes increasingly political as advances in reproductive technology require the articulation of new moral positions and social policy. As we move from the quest to have children to the desire to legally terminate or prevent pregnancy, the alignment of reproduction and disability can also change the terms of the debate. An ongoing conversation between feminists and disability theorists has demanded a reconsideration of, or at least a more nuanced take on, the pro-choice position that stands as a cornerstone of the contemporary women’s rights movement.2 Approaching the question of reproduction and the ideological value of children through the lens of disability studies requires a reconsideration of orthodox political positions. These reconsiderations, however, can produce strange bedfellows as arguments from each point on the political spectrum articulate their position according to the perceived value of “life” and its preservation. In their arguments against aborting disabled fetuses or euthanasia, do disability activists have more in common with a right-wing “culture of life” than with the pro-choice, pro-euthanasia advocates on the left who couch their positions in terms of “quality of conceiving the freakish...